n.

"Ivy," said I one day, "we'll be picked up by a passing steamer some
day, of course, but meanwhile I'd rather be here with you than any place
I can name."

"It's Eden," she said, "and I'd like to live like this always. But----"

"But what?"

"But people grow old," she said, "and one dies before another. That's
what's wrong with Eden."

I laughed at her.

"Old! You and I? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Ivy Bower."

"Right Bower," says she, "you don't understand----"

"How not understand?"

"You don't understand that Right Bower and Ivy Bower aren't the only
people on this island."

She didn't turn a fiery red and bolt--the way young wives do in stories.
She looked at me with steady, brave, considering eyes.

"Don't worry, dear," she says after a time; "everything will be all
right. I know it will."

"I know it too." I lied.

Know it? I was cold with fright.

"Don't be afraid," said she. "And--and meanwhile there's dinner to be
got ready--and you can have a go at your firesticks."

It was my ambition to get fire by friction. Now and then I got the
sticks to smoke and I hoped that practice would give me the little extra
speed and cunning that makes for flame. I'd always been pretty good at
games, if a little slow to learn.

VI

You'd think anxiety about Ivy'd have been the hardest thing to bear in
the life we were living; and so it would have been if she'd showed any
anxiety about herself. Not she. You might have thought she was looking
forward to a Christmas-box from home. If she was ever scared it was
when I wasn't looking. No--it was the beasts that made us anxious.

At first we'd go for long walks and make explorations up and down the
island. The beasts hid from us according to the wild nature that's in
them. You could only tell from fresh tracks in damp places that they
hadn't utterly disappeared. Now and then we saw deer and antelopes far
off; and at night, of course, there was always something doing in the
way of a chorus. Beasts that gave our end of the island the go-by
daytimes paid us visits nights and sat under the windows, you may say,
and sang their songs.

It seemed natural after a time to be cooped up in a big green prison
with a lot of loose wild things that could bite and tear you to pieces
if they thought of it. We were hard to scare. What scared me first was
this: When we got to the island it was alive with goats. Well, these
just casually disappeared. Then, o